Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

They don’t make cops much more world-weary than Moscow homicide investigator Arkady Renko, who has remained steadfast in his principles while trying to stay afloat in the vast sea of corruption that is post-Soviet Union Russia. Author Martin Cruz Smith puts it succinctly in the opening pages of his latest Renko thriller, Tatiana: “As for himself, Arkady knew he should quit the...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

It shouldn't have even been Deputy Brynn McKenzie's call. She was off - duty, sitting down to supper, when she received notification of an aborted 911 call from remote Lake Mondac, deep in the Wisconsin wilderness. No big deal, probably; all in all, it would seem to be a fairly innocuous beginning to Jeffery Deaver's newest thriller, The Bodies Left Behind. However, the lakeside...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

Take a look at Declan Hughes' dark thriller, The Price of Blood. Ed Loy has been given one of the stranger assignments of his career: a missing persons case in which the only piece of information he has to work with is the name of the missing person; no dates, no workplace, no family, simply a name - Patrick Hutton. And finding one particular Patrick Hutton in Ireland is akin to finding,...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

And now for something completely different: no Florida sunshine, no comic caricatures, no whimsical storylines. Galway, Ireland private investigator Jack Taylor is the depressive to Serge Storms' manic. The Killing of the Tinkers, Ken Bruen's second novel featuring the dark musings of alcoholic ex-cop Taylor, is the superb sequel to last year's The Guards. This time out, Taylor is hired by the...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

Terminally hip tabloid journalist Jimmy Gage returns for an encore performance in Robert Ferrigno's fast-paced Scavenger Hunt. Introduced in the 2001 novel Flinch, Gage was faced with the dreadful prospect that his successful surgeon brother might well be a serial killer. In his latest outing, Gage investigates the death of Garrett Walsh, a renegade Hollywood director, a one-time boy...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

<B>Bruce's mystery of the month</B> <I>The Tip of the Ice Pick</I> award for January goes to veteran Irish author Ken Bruen for his brilliant novel <B>The Guards</B>, a dark and ominous tale of serial killings in modern-day Galway. Jack Taylor is a disgraced ex-cop. Ousted from the fabled Garda Siochana, the Irish police force, he has devolved from a social...